AWS config is the service offered by the Amazon Web Service where you can have an overview of all the configuration of AWS resources that are in use. You can also audit the changes made to the configurations of AWS resources from time to time, which will help you know the effects that occurred because of the changes.
What Is AWS Config?
Amazon Web Services offers AWS config as a service, which is used to audit and evaluate AWS resources. It gives you an overview of the past condition of your environment and assists you in tracking changes made to your AWS resources over time. By which you can regularly follow the changes made to, security, and compliance in particular, AWS Config can be helpful.
What are The Rules In AWS Config?
Rules in AWS Config are collections of certain conditions that are used in AWS Config to evaluate how your AWS resource configurations are configured. With the use of these guidelines, you can determine if your AWS resources are configured according to the configurations and policies you define. You can create custom rules to fit the needs of your organization in addition to the standard rules that AWS Config offers.
Uses of AWS Config
1. Configuration Visibility
AWS Config provides a comprehensive view of the configurations of AWS resources within your environment. It allows you to track changes over time and understand the historical state of resources. This visibility is crucial for troubleshooting, auditing, and maintaining a clear understanding of your infrastructure.
2. Change Management
AWS plays a major role in change management processes it will help the organization to tract the changes made to the AWS resources to their configurations. You can also track who made the changes what the changes and the time of the changes made which will help the organization to keep track of the changes made.
3. Audit and Reporting
Audit trails and comprehensive reports on AWS resource setups are offered via AWS Config. These reports can be helpful for creating documentation, doing internal reviews, and auditing. Additionally, they can help in proving compliance to stakeholders, both internal and external.
4. Resource Inventory
AWS config will maintain detailed information on the AWS resources like resource types, IDs, tags, and relationships. This inventory helps organizations keep track of the resources deployed in their environment, enabling better resource management.
Step By Step Process To Set AWS Config
Step 1: Log in to the AWS account and search for the AWS config as shown in the image below. To know how to create an AWS free tier account refer to the how to create AWS free tier account.
Step 2: Click on Get started to start configure the aws config service.
Step 3: In this we going to select the all the resources to get the overview of AWS resources and also select the frequency of the recording the changes which are made to your aws resources as show in the below.
Here there is two types of recordings
- Continuous Recording: It will record each and every time when ever there is changes to the resources in AWS.
- Daily Recording: It will record the once in the day depending up on the required time of the organization.
Step 3: Here AWS config requires permission to access the other resources to the get the configuration for that we need to attach the AWS IAM policies to it or you can create it by selecting the Create AWS config service linked role so the IAM role will automatically creates.
Step 3:Create or choose the S3 bucket it will log the the changes to the AWS S3 bucker make sure it is having appropriate permissions.
Step 4: Select the rule according to the rules AWS config will evaluate the AWS resources.
Step 5: Review all the configurations done. If the configuration are good then click on the create.
Step 6:AWS config was created successfully. know you can click on the resources tab to see the resource in the AWS account across the region.
Conclusion
In this article we learned how to configure AWS config step-by-step guide you can explore more on AWS configure like selecting the AWS config rules depending on the requirement of your organization.
AWS Config – FAQ’s
What is the difference between AWS config and CloudTrail?
- AWS Config: AWS Config will manage the configuration details of AWS resources over the time and keep the track of the changes made to the configurations of the AWS resources.
- AWS CloudTrail: Your AWS account’s API activity can be tracked and recorded with AWS CloudTrail. It records information on the services and resources used, the actions taken, and the person who made the API call.
What is an AWS config file?
The AWS Config file is “~/.aws/config” in linux based systems. The main use of AWS config is to configure settings for the AWS CLI, including default AWS region, output format, and other options.